The former head of the Catholic Salesian order in the Netherlands has been arrested on suspicion of possessing child pornography.

The 75-year-old was arrested last Monday and released the same day because the arrest ‘concerned a small amount of material from years ago’, the public prosecution department said.
Herman Spronck’s age was also a determining factor, the department said.
Spronck hit the headlines in May after he defended a fellow Salesian who had been a board member of the pro-paedophilia lobby group Martijn. He also said that adult child sexual relationships were not necessarily damaging. He was then suspended as the order’s head in the Netherlands.

Scandal
The Salesian order has been at the centre of the scandal surrounding child abuse within the Dutch Catholic church.
Thousands of past cases of alleged sexual abuse by Dutch priests are currently under investigation. The scandal broke last year after an investigation into claims of abuse in the 1950s and 60s at boarding schools run by Salesian priests.
The Salesian order was set up at the end of the 19th century to carry out ‘works of charity to help the young, especially the poor, and to educate boys for the priesthood.’
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Catholic priest was member of pro-paedophilia group